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Will Woodstock Join Chicago in Suspending Plastic Bag Tax?

“The Single-Use-Bag fee has been suspended until May 31, 2020. This is enacted both as a financial incentive as well as to address the concern that reusable bags are not routinely washed and could transmit the disease to retail locations. Regular washing of reusable bags is recommended.”

A study by two universities, from Arizona and California, in 2010 documented the dangers of reusable bags brought in to food stores. See below. People may be using “reusable” bags because they are tree-huggers thinking they are saving the environment or to avoid paying a bag tax or avoid paying a bag fee at some stores or maybe even to look cool. Looking cool might mean using a fabric/canvas bag that has some “trendy” logo or artwork. Gucci makes tote bags costing hundreds of dollars.

Do tree hugging and do-gooder legislatures or city councils ignorantly and stupidly promote the use of “reusable bags” through their laws and taxes?

Reusable bags that contained drippings from store bought and dripping chicken or ground beef juice might not be sanitized by the owner. Also, the public, does not know how people with reusable bags use them beyond the grocery store. Do they use them to take and then bring back home sweat soaked gym clothes? Ughhh!! See link to article from University below:

These bags may be friendly to the environment, but not necessarily to you, according to a new report by researchers at two universities.

Reusable grocery bags can be a breeding ground for dangerous food-borne bacteria and pose a serious risk to public health, according to a joint food-safety research report issued today by the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University in California.

Bacteria levels found in reusable bags were significant enough to cause a wide range of serious health problems and even death. They are a particular danger for young children, who are especially vulnerable to food-borne illnesses.

News flash to dentbla. Tree huggers is a generic term. Per dictionary, It is someone who is regarded as foolish or annoying because of being too concerned about protecting trees, animals, and other parts of the natural world from pollution and other threats.

That would include using crude oil in the production of various products.

That was the best laugh I have had in a long while, Heinrich. You seriously think anyone is cleaning up any planets? Your comedy relief was really needed at such a time as this. Tin can and whales! LOL You slay me!

It’s an arbitrary, punitive & capricious tax imposed by people that know better than you do how to live your everyday life.

According to an April 9 report by NPR (those right wing radicals!), in places where the plastic grocery bags were banned, sales of retail garbage bags skyrocketed by 120 percent.

Being thicker than the flimsy grocery bags, this creates more plastic waste.

The Vermont bill under consideration which would define “reusable” a 4 mil thick would require using 8 times more plastic.

In addition, the bans created 80 million pounds of extra paper trash per year as people simply switched to paper bags.

To quote from the article:

Plastic haters, it’s time to brace yourselves.

A bunch of studies find that paper bags are actually worse for the environment.

They require cutting down and processing trees, which involves lots of water, toxic chemicals, fuel and heavy machinery.

While paper is biodegradable and avoids some of the problems of plastic, Taylor says, the huge increase of paper, together with the uptick in plastic trash bags, means banning plastic shopping bags increases greenhouse gas emissions.

If you believe that we have twelve years to get our greenhouse gas emissions under control or we’ll all die, as many of the bag-banners profess, this should be “game over” for plastic bag ban legislation, should it not?

But what about forcing people to use cloth bags (hence the brief flirtation with banning paper bags as well)? Again from NPR:

The Danish government recently did a study that took into account environmental impacts beyond simply greenhouse gas emissions, including water use, damage to ecosystems and air pollution.

These factors make cloth bags even worse.

They estimate you would have to use an organic cotton bag 20,000 times more than a plastic grocery bag to make using it better for the environment.